Comments for Hot Topichttp://hot-topic.co.nz
Global warming and the future of New ZealandTue, 06 Dec 2016 07:26:44 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1Comment on This year can’t end fast enough by Thomashttp://hot-topic.co.nz/this-year-cant-end-fast-enough/#comment-48401
Tue, 06 Dec 2016 07:26:44 +0000http://hot-topic.co.nz/?p=15273#comment-48401The planet starts to suffer on many corners now from our actions:http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11761624
A 60,000 square km dead zone in the Indian Ocean to the northeast of Australia.
No oxygen breathing life can sustain itself in these waters anymore. And the future of this patch spells serious trouble for the nutrition cycle in the oceans. Dead zones are caused by over fertilization from runoff and are also promoted by rising temperatures.

Welcome to your future in Andy’s world… unless….

]]>Comment on This year can’t end fast enough by nigeljhttp://hot-topic.co.nz/this-year-cant-end-fast-enough/#comment-48400
Mon, 05 Dec 2016 20:41:37 +0000http://hot-topic.co.nz/?p=15273#comment-48400Thomas, yes agreed. I have also watched the development of politics and the alternate right in America. I have had much the same thoughts as you.

I have a natural innate dislike of the alternate right or hard right. The alternate right get bogged down in irrational fears, and this is probably the biggest potential global source of conflict and war. To me multiculturalism has a range of benefits in linking the world together, and seems to have largely worked in NZ. It can only help diffuse major global tension.

The irrational fears of the alternate right go hand in hand with racism, bigotry, demanding high levels of conformity, suspicion of science, and dogmatic, unproven views on moral issues. Its one big combination of things that exists in an increasingly alternative reality divorced from scientific knowledge.

The nonsense of the alternate right all spreads with false news on websites. For example the Herald ran an article today where some nutter with a gun has tried to attack a shop because he believed it was the centre of a paedophile ring (it wasnt). This is because of false news linking Hilary Clinton to paedophile rings.

However I dont want to fall into the same bubble trap as the alternative right do in their alternative universe. Fear of other cultures or beliefs is obviously an evolutionary trait, that protects us against potential threats. It does serve some purpose, and we would be naive to think no threat ever exists. The thing is not to be ruled by this fear like the alternate right, and take a more discerning, rational approach.

Most cultures seem to fit into NZ reasonably well, but as I have said before we need to be thinking about a certain middle eastern religion carefully, and making sure we do our best to keep more radical individuals out of NZ. In out rush to embrace others we have been a bit soft on this issue. That’s not racist to be concerned about a certain culture, because we are considering what may be a genuine threat, not nameless fears. Todays Herald has an interesting article on radical branches of Islam.

But as you point out The Donald Trump response to the issue is clumsy and plays into the radicals hands. He proposes high levels of exclusion of immigrants and 24 / 7 monitoring etc at least in his campaign rhetoric. This is clumsy, appeals to hate and emotion, and will do more harm than good as it plays into the extremists hands. This is so frustrating and I can just see how it will play out.

Maybe Trump will tone it down and do something more sensible but amazingly he is already starting a war of words with China. I’m just not optimistic about Trump.

]]>Comment on This year can’t end fast enough by Thomashttp://hot-topic.co.nz/this-year-cant-end-fast-enough/#comment-48399
Mon, 05 Dec 2016 17:29:46 +0000http://hot-topic.co.nz/?p=15273#comment-48399With the erosive agitation of the alt-right movement, we have entered the “Post-Truth World” as many commentators have realized. What remains where can commonly agree on truth are perhaps just the scoreboards of our sports games:https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/dec/05/sports-distraction-post-truth-world

And perhaps – for as long as Google and others can rely on satellites to look back towards us and our planet – until the day Trumps little army of truth fudgers will succeed in blinding us all, Google has some ‘sport’ to watch for us:

]]>Comment on This year can’t end fast enough by Thomashttp://hot-topic.co.nz/this-year-cant-end-fast-enough/#comment-48398
Mon, 05 Dec 2016 07:10:30 +0000http://hot-topic.co.nz/?p=15273#comment-48398Andy is an active and provocative agent of the Alt-Right Brownshirt movement. He has not said anything to even begin convincing anybody here that he is not.

The Alt-Right to which Andy belongs is a fight club against liberalism, multiculturalism, internationalism, environmentalism and against anything and anybody who might get in their way of their imagined entitlement to absolute rule. Science is hated and fought against because it dares to make statements of fact. Right-wing activists believe in their unquestioned God-given entitlement to be ‘sovereign’ patriarchs and to have the absolute power to dictate what’s right and what’s wrong, to their families, their communities, the nation, and those hated others. The rights normally cannot function without a target to channel and evoke Hate as their primal emotional motivator. Science, facts and nature herself, if in the way, must and simply can be defeated in their belief, and is denied, derided, ridiculed and inverted with Orwellian ‘logic’.

Sadly, in these tense times, the underbelly of our electorates (just as in 1933) proves susceptible to their tunes. Hate sells. In that way ISIS and the Western Right wingers are very similar and – they need and enhance each other. ISIS leadership has in fact confirmed that and admitted how much they wanted the Alt-Right and Trump to win. They danced in the streets when Brexit put the UK into an anti-immigrant and anti-foreigners nationalist direction. ISIS needs a right wing reaction of our societies like the fire needs oxygen.

Welcome to Andy’s world.

]]>Comment on This year can’t end fast enough by nigeljhttp://hot-topic.co.nz/this-year-cant-end-fast-enough/#comment-48396
Sun, 04 Dec 2016 20:00:31 +0000http://hot-topic.co.nz/?p=15273#comment-48396Really Andy. You just felt compelled to write a hate screed about Castro because he has to quote “just died”. On a climate change website.

I don’t recall you writing a similar hate screed about Francisco Guillermo Flores of El Salvador, a conservative right wing dictator and awful creep with an awful record. He died this very year.

Still its not too late Andy. You can condemn him here like you condemned Castro. It may be cathartic for you.